US Bank offers business customers Visa Payment Controls

U.S. Bank is the first bank in the nation to offer Visa Payment Controls, which gives small business owners control over how, when and where their employees' business credit cards are used.

"Visa Payment Controls lets small business owners spend more time focused on their business and less time worrying about how their business credit cards are being used by their employees," said Cathi Stanton, senior vice president for U.S. Bank Retail Payment Solutions. "Combined with U.S. Bank's exclusive and free FlexControl options and ScoreBoard reporting tool, we're offering small businesses powerful applications to help them control and track business credit card spending, while also cutting down on administrative work."

With easy, online management controls, Visa Payment Controls lets small business owners manage how employees can use their cards based on:

Time of day or day of week Geographical area Certain merchant types Dollar amount Transaction types, such as cash advances or cash withdrawals

For example, the owner of a delivery company could set controls that allow drivers to use their business credit card only during certain times of the day with a cap on daily spending. The owner could also set up alerts to be notified when transactions are blocked because they're outside parameters set on a particular card. Controls can be applied or removed in real-time, giving business owners complete flexibility over managing their employee card usage.

"With Visa Payment Controls, business owners can replace inefficient and costly cash and check systems with secure, reliable and convenient employee credit cards and automatically take greater control over employee spending," Stanton said.